Of The Stranger Before Him
by Monster Tesk
Summary: John grieves. He can't move on. All the little pieces of him fall apart without the biggest piece holding him together. He isn't whole. He isn't complete. Rated T just in case. "Character death" Part 2 in a 3 piece mini-series. Triggers: self harm. Gen.


_Not mine. If only. Please read warnings in case you have triggers or something. If any mistakes are noticed I would greatly appreciate them being pointed out._

_John grieves. He can't move on. All the little pieces of him fall apart without the biggest piece holding him together. He isn't whole. He isn't complete. Rated T just in case. "Character death"_

_**An update on Of the Stranger Before Him (Formerly All the Little Pieces of the Stranger Before Him):**_

_**I have decided to turn it into a short three piece mini-series. Lots of angst. Gen. The titles will read, when laid out in order, "All The Little Pieces" "Of the Stranger Before Him" "Fall Apart"**_

_The short up is Sherlock fakes his death to insure that Moriarty is finally gone. It turns out that he can't hold himself together without John. While John grieves for the loss of his friend and colleague he changes into a man he no longer recognizes. Mycroft has to hold the two of them together while they are apart. _

_It's all very depressing and morbid and awfully terrible. To keep me from going insane with writing all of this I will try (and fail, mind) to post a fluff or crack piece as well. It will involve the phrase "non-consensual tanning situation" and possibly ginger!Sherlock. Why? Because ginger. _

_Regards,_

_-TS._

**Summary**: John grieves. He can't move on. All the little pieces of him fall apart without the biggest piece holding him together. He isn't whole. He isn't complete. Rated T just in case.

**WARNINGS: **"Character death" Self-harm, depression, sortof!anorexia, vomiting, agoraphobia.

The flat hasn't changed. Everything is exactly the same. And it feels so wrong.

John knows from experience that things never change when this sort of event happens. Everything just keeps on going no matter how much you want it to stop. He clenches his jaw and closes the door. His whole body feels stiff and numb. Every time he inhales he feels that receding moment in the back of his throat as if he is about to throw up. He drops his coat and the bag of personal possessions onto his chair and stands there, gripping the back of it, looking around at the flat.

There is some type of experiment on the kitchen table involving fingernails and John can see the butter tupper that contains some odd smelling liquid and chunky things that John didn't quite want to name. There are baubles and test tubes and rubber piping lying about and it all seems too much for John. He crouches, quicker than he should; his head swims a bit, and covers his face.

He doesn't want to be here, God, he doesn't. Not without him. Not without Sherlock. It's just wrong. This whole thing is wrong.

John wakes up gasping, again. A low, mournful silent scream pulled out of his chest, again. He's sweating and shaky but he doesn't care. He stares around the room he's in. It's not his. The room is unfamiliar—somewhere he has never been. But it's familiar. The clutter, books, clothes, odd gadgets that make no sense, the light smell of chemicals and the pervading odor of cigarettes. John turns on his side and pulls the pillow against his chest, inhales. It smells like smoke and something slightly off. A bit like the morgue. It makes John shudder and his face twist up. He doesn't cry. He never cries. He can't stand it if he does. So instead he squeezes the pillow as tight as he can and buries his face in it, almost suffocating in it.

John lives alone so no one notices that he hasn't eaten a full meal since—since the incident. No one notices that he doesn't have an appetite but Mrs. Hudson notices that he's looking thin and tired but doesn't comment about the screaming at night because she doesn't hear it. John is silent in this as he is in his grief. She does notice that he hardly speaks but doesn't quite catch the sick expression on his face before he opens his mouth to give the bare minimum response.

Harry notices nothing, as usual, because she's never really been in his life. She doesn't notice the difference except that now he doesn't bother coming up with excuses not to call her. After two weeks Lestrade invites John out to dinner and John accepts only because Lestrade is part of the world that involves Sherlock. Because Lestrade is proof that Sherlock was there, in John's life, all over and encompassing. John picks at his meal as Lestrade talks about petty criminals and how the team is doing. He eats just enough that Lestrade thinks he's doing fine.

John only pays enough attention to know when he is supposed to make a remark. He feels ill and awful for being near Lestrade without Sherlock. But now… that's all he has. He is always without Sherlock. John's full attention is only caught when Lestrade starts talking about Sherlock. He tells John about how Sherlock solved a case of serial murders involving a snake and a band of circus performers. John manages a weak laugh at how Lestrade describes Sherlock's not-terrified-at-all-why-would-I-be-scared-of-a-simple-snake face.

John drinks only water, knowing the downfalls of having an addict in the family, he doesn't even want to tempt himself.

When he gets home the sick feeling gets increasingly worse because _itsmellslikehim_ and _histhingsarehere_ but _heisnot_ and _heneverwillbeagain. _John barely makes it to the bathroom before he throws up. He sits on the floor and stares at the razor that Sherlock used to shave with. His skin itches.

John falls asleep sitting there on the floor staring at the razor. When he wakes up he is shivering and feels achy but he doesn't move. He doesn't want to go sleep in his bed, which has lain untouched since his return, and he doesn't want to go to Sherlock's room because it would be too much. John doesn't want to move. Never wants to move. He feels empty and un-whole. Incomplete.

The next day Mycroft stops by the flat and he seems solemn and a little tired but he doesn't look how John feels. It doesn't look like a giant chunk of Mycroft is missing. In fact, it looks like he's gained a bit more of himself. John barely hears what he says. _Moving on, living after, survivor's guilt._ _Job will be waiting. Everything is taken care of…_ John just wants him to leave. Wants him to get out of Sherlock's chair. Wants him to stop perverting the room with his presence. No one but Sherlock is allowed in here. No one. John doesn't even belong.

It becomes increasingly difficult for John to keep his food down. Not even the small, bland, bland meals that he prepares as a form of self-preservation. His body wracks and his throat burns when his toast and tea come back up in the morning and in the evening his mouth bulges and aches when what little he ate of what Mrs. Hudson prepared gets rejected by his stomach. His clothes begin to hang and his face thins.

One morning, after losing his oatmeal and milk, John looks at himself in the mirror and he sees a stranger. Concave and beige with eyes that appear far larger and far sadder than anyone's have a right to be. John mouths _I hate you_ at the mirror and angrily slams the bathroom door as if he can leave that man in there.

John gives up on eating at all after a month. He takes to drinking vegetable juice or sport drinks to keep himself out of the hospital. Plus they hurt less to vomit up.

Every day John takes a walk around the area. Sometimes he's only gone five minutes, the press and energy of humanity overcoming him and he spends the rest of the day gasping and hugging his knees to himself on the kitchen floor with his back to a cupboard. Sometimes he's gone from sunrise to sunrise; lost and bewildered in the push and pull of people. He does it because he knows it's good for him and because he knows he needs to be around people but he hates it. He always hates it.

One day while he's out a woman hits on him and slides her number into his coat pocket. He is horrified at this. He turns from her and ignores her agitated calls for him to come back. He runs all the way home.

When he gets there he's out of breath and his thin chest rattles with exertion and disgust. He manages to make it to the bathroom and kneels in front of the toilet and heaves but there isn't anything to vomit out. He's there for ten minutes and manages only to expel some bile. The effort leaves him wracked and shaky and a bit disoriented. He looks at himself in the mirror and has no idea who the fuck is staring back at him. His eyes are big and dead and his lips are red and shiny with bile. His hair is longer than it has been since before he went into the service. His shirt looks like he borrowed it and his swims in his sweater. He stands there and bites his lip to make sure that it is he in the mirror. He doesn't stop until he's bleeding and the bile in his mouth has seeped into the wound and stings and burns. Blood runs freely down his jaw. He grabs some tissues without any heart and holds them just below his lip to keep the blood off of him.

When the bleeding slows this time he doesn't just mouth the words but says them aloud.

"I hate you."

John doesn't know whom he's talking to.

For a while John can't even make himself touch the doorknob to leave. Instead he pulls out the pack of cigarettes he found in Sherlock's room and fingers the filter of one of them. He sits on the floor in the middle of the sitting room and just touches the filter for days. When he gets up the nerve to light it, he takes in a deep drag and holds it until the room spins and he falls over.

He doesn't bother getting back up or stretching out his legs. He just takes another drag and holds that one in too. Once he's had two or three cigarettes, he gets up, staggering because the room hasn't stopped spinning and goes over to the bag he left on his chair the first day he got back.

He pulls out a well-worn coat. Long and thin and dark. He holds it gently, reverently and bows down to smell it. The scent causes him to fling the coat back on his chair and stagger back, trip over the coffee table and fall. His legs sit on the table and his head is cushioned by the edge of the sofa. He grunts because the wood in the sofa pushes on his back and forces the air out. It hurts and he knows there will be a bruise. His shoulder blades dig into the sofa and when he moves it hurts.

That fall was the first time John has felt alive since he died. He curls his legs against his chest but doesn't move to get more comfortable. He finishes the cigarette in his hand, stubbing it out on the table. He watches the smoke from it curl up and around the air. He feels nauseated for a moment because the way it drifts and purls reminds him of Sherlock's hair.

That night John takes the coat into Sherlock's room and curls up in the middle of his bed and holds it tight to him. It smells of chlorine but under that he can smell sweat and smoke and that citrusy slightly off spice. It's the first night John doesn't wake up silently screaming. Something worse happens. He cries. In his sleep. He wakes up with twin splotches on the coat where John had pressed his face into it while he slept.

He doesn't make it past his morning tea before he's in the bathroom, vomiting. His stomach hurts in deep pangs and an old soreness after. Looking in the mirror John hates everything he sees. The stranger before him makes him so angry that John hurts deep in his chest. He shakes with rage and doesn't bother stopping himself from letting fly his fist into the mirror. He screams in a broken, disused voice. He knows what words he said even if he didn't remember to think to say them. _I hate you_ is the only thing John has said in a very long time.

The glass breaks, of course, and the tinkling sound of it falling into the sink and on the floor makes John laugh a ragged and disturbing peel of laughter. There is glass in his hand. He collapses back against the wall behind him and slides to the floor. He can see the man reflected in all the little pieces of glass around him. He passes out from a combination of fatigue, blood loss, and malnutrition. He doesn't know how long he has slept there but when he wakes up there's a stinging itch in his hand and it feels warm and then he notices the other hands touching him. Touching his hand.

He looks over to his side and sees Mycroft. Calm, with a pinched pained expression on his face. He tutts and asks John what he's doing with himself. John doesn't flinch when Mycroft pulls out the pieces of glass. He stares down at his hand and frowns as if it has betrayed him. Mycroft wraps up his hand with precision and practice, as if he has spent much of his life nursing wounds.

John thinks it's possible he has.

He stops noticing when days pass. When weeks pass. When months pass. It's all just an unintelligible blur of days. He ends up in the hospital twice on IV nutrients. He ends up having to plead with Mycroft to get him released. Mycroft agrees on the condition that John take vitamins and attempt to eat at least one meal a day.

John keeps down the pills but only if he doesn't eat until evening. Then he vomits up whatever it is that is in his stomach. The mirror was replaced without John knowing it. Probably while he was in hospital or maybe not. John doesn't know or care. He breaks it twice more before Mycroft stops getting it fixed. Sally tries to visit him six times before she gives up. John throws a glass at the door when she tries to come in the sixth and she turns around and leaves. He can hear her crying the whole way.

After a while Mycroft comments that he seems to be getting better. John doesn't know. John hasn't seen himself in weeks. He makes a comment about facial hair because he can't shave without a mirror in the bathroom.

The next time John wakes up there's a new mirror. Looking at the man in it makes him sick and he throws up his vitamins. It isn't long before he gets sick of seeing this wretched excuse of a man. The next time he breaks it he uses both hands at once and then he collapses. Both hands hit the floor at the same time to catch him. He can feel his palms slice as his weight is pushed onto where they press into the floor. He backs up until he is pressed between the bath and the wall in a corner and stares at the red and shine and the man in the reflections. He rocks a little but soon stops because it makes him feel ill.

The next time he wakes he is in a bed. It is soft and smells like smoke and sweat and that citrus gone off spice. He opens his eyes and feels his hands ache. They're wrapped in bandages. He wonders aloud when Mycroft will just give up.

Someone says his name and it's not Mycroft or Mrs. Hudson or Sally or Lestrade. It's a voice he hasn't heard in a very long time.

"I'm gone for a eighteen months and this is what you do to yourself?"

The voice is commanding and condescending and filled with disappointment and John knows it. He turns his head and he can make out black curls, a little longer than he remembers, tired gray eyes, a face that has lost what little fat it had, a severe mouth pressed into a severe line.

His shoulders are sharper than they used to be but still straight and proud and his suit is just as sharp and fitting. He takes a step closer to where John lays on his bed.

"Really, John, I expected better from you."

John opens his mouth and, for the first time in eighteen months he says a word out loud that he barely allowed himself to think.

"Sherlock."

Saying it makes his heart beat again. So he says it again.

"Sherlock."

The so-named man steps closer and sits on the edge of the bed.

"What have you done to yourself?"

His voice is low and serious and the frown on his face speaks of disapproval. John sits up slowly. He doesn't have much energy and it is by force of will alone that he manages to take his thin frame and prop it against the head of Sherlock's bed. He lifts his weak arm and touches Sherlock's arm. Sherlock grabs his hand, gently, mindful of the bandages and holds it carefully in his own.

"Don't do this anymore, John."

John nods because of course because yes because always. Because he is complete again.


End file.
